1 Core Executive Politics in Greece: the paradox of absent centralisation Paper Presented at: 63rd Political Studies Association Annual International Conference The Party's Over? 25 - 27 March 2013, City Hall Cardiff Kevin Featherstone London School of Economics Eleftherios Venizelos Professor of Contemporary Greek Studies and Professor of European Politics [email protected] Dimitris Papadimitriou University of Manchester Reader in European Politics [email protected] Abstract International attention has focussed recently on the reform ‘failures’ of Greece in the context of its European Union membership. Systemic constraints are increasingly recognised. The present paper argues that attention ought also to be given to the inner workings of government at the centre and their undermining of reform capacity. It explores the nature of the Greek core executive across five premierships and argues the supposed supremacy of the PM is something of a fallacy. In reality, the structure is one of a ‘solitary centre’ amidst a ‘segmented government’. As such, the closest parallels are with central, rather than southern, Europe. In developing its empirical analysis, the paper makes a methodological contribution to the examination of core executive relations and resources. Introduction The sovereign debt crisis in Greece has highlighted deep-rooted problems of the reform capacity of the domestic polity, raising questions as to its position within the euro-zone. Prior to the crisis, the repeated reform failures at home could be attributed to constraints and distortions of a systemic nature (Featherstone and Papadimitriou, 2008; Mitsopoulos and Pelagidis, 2011). But in a political culture that has long emphasised the importance 2 of the ‘leader’, successive prime ministers have been castigated for their failure to do more. To what extent might these failures be attributable, in part, to the very inner workings of the Greek government at the centre? This is a subject that has received barely any academic attention: contrasting the relevance of leadership personality and the structural location of the PM’s position to questions of direction, planning and coordination. The present paper explores the nature of the Greek core executive1. It neither fits the thesis of the ‘presidentialisation’ of politics nor really that of a ‘hollowness’ resulting from a complex fragmentation of governmental processes (Poguntke and Webb, 2005; Rhodes, 1994). Instead, it is shown that it is akin to the ‘solitary centres’ identified in Central Europe (Goetz and Magretts, 1999). Like them, it has resisted the ‘imperative towards coordination’ within the contemporary core executive (Davis, 1997: 144) and has struggled with the demands of adaptation to European Union (EU) membership. Unlike them, it is a solitary centre that has lasted for almost four decades. The paper asserts that the supposed supremacy of the PM in the Greek system is something of a fallacy and as such it has contributed to an incomplete understanding of the problem of reform capacity. The paper follows Elgie’s call for research to examine core executives in depth and to assess their degree of change over time (1997: 231): locating the Greek case within a wider European spectrum and then examining its evolution across five major premierships of the recent period – the ‘metapolitefsi’ since the restoration of democracy in 1974. In doing so, the paper seeks to make three contributions. Methodologically – and of potential general relevance - it develops a matrix of indicators by which to evaluate the relations between actors within a core executive, facilitating both the location of cases within conventional typologies and international comparison, with special reference to the position of the Prime Minister. Conceptually, it extends our understanding of the PM domain as a ‘solitary centre’ by its application to a different setting. Finally, empirically, it deepens the characterisation of the Greek case as being one of ‘segmented government’ (Elgie, 2011) with shifts between sub-types. The Conclusion draws out the wider conceptual and empirical implications. To our knowledge, this is the first systematic study of the evolution of the core executive in Greece in any language. ‘Solitary Centres’: the Greek Core Executive in Context There are certain features of the Greek core executive that have remained relatively stable. The Prime Minister is widely seen as ‘primus solus’ in a setting of ‘prime minister centrism’ (Koutsoukis, 1994: 280). In constitutional terms, he (there has never been a female PM) may be more powerful than any of his counterparts in the West (Dagtoglou, 1 The usage here follows the classic definition of Dunleavy and Rhodes (1990:4) that it includes ‘all those organizations and structures which primarily serve to pull together and integrate central government policies, or act as final arbiters within the executive of conflicts between different elements of the government machine’. We refer, in particular, to the offices and networks around the PM. We prefer this to the Goetz and Magretts (1999) formulation of ‘centre of government’, for consistency. 3 1986). The Constitution of 1975 had established a parliamentary system, but with an indirectly-elected president possessing some De Gaulle-type powers as the guardian. Andreas Papandreou swept these away in 1986, greatly strengthening the constitutional position of the PM. Though the Constitution was further revised in 2001, it did not significantly alter the position of the PM. Moreover, the wider constitutional system offers few checks and balances on the power of the PM (with a unicameral Parliament; weak judicial oversight; and, strong party discipline). There is a record since 1974 of relatively long periods of tenure for prime ministers, with four of the eight incumbents to 2009 each serving between five and ten years (see Table 2). This position contrasts, however, with the reality of limited resources to support the PM’s role. In 2005, for example, the Greek PM’s Office had just under 90 staff and the vast majority of these appear to have been inactive, presumably fulfilling roles elsewhere outside the PM’s Office. Other, comparable, states have much larger offices around the PM: the Austrian Federal Chancellery was nearly ten times larger, the Dutch Ministry of General Affairs four times; and the Irish Department of Taioseach was twice as big. Two further features have endured. One is the considerable degree of operational independence enjoyed by individual ministers in the context of an administrative system with tightly defined competences, built on the imperative of the ‘Minister’s signature’ (Flogaitis, 1987). In effect, Ministers exercise authority in their own right, rather than by delegation from the Cabinet (Davis, 1997: 137). The other long-term feature is the passivity of the bureaucracy: ‘Permanent civil servants are transformed into mere observers of the policy process without a direct stake in it’ (Dimitrakopoulos, 2001: 607). Ministries are politicised: the upper echelons are political appointees that normally move post with the minister and a dependency circle is thus created (Sotiropoulos, 1999: 15). Alongside these long-term features, the ‘Cabinet’ system2 – as the later empirical investigation will illustrate – has, historically, often been weak in its status and operation. Against this background, placing the Greek case in the prevailing typologies on the core executive is problematic. Dunleavy and Rhodes (1990), for example, outlined six such variants and none fit well the Greek case. It comes closer to what Andeweg refers to as ‘monocratic-segmented’ core executive, with a powerful PM and groups of ministers (1997: 62). Similar is Elgie’s depiction of ‘segmented government’(Elgie, 1997:225) in which a sectoral division of labour exists amongst core executive actors, with little cross- over. We argue that Greece has reflected his sub-category of ‘monocratic-ministerial’ – where the PM focuses on certain priority areas and ministerial colleagues are left with decision-making responsibilities in their domains with ‘the cabinet simply being a residual organization and bureaucrats merely implementing decisions’ (Elgie, 1997:225). 2 ‘Cabinet’ is used here to refer to a constitutional form that generically may comprise various committees as well as a ‘cabinet’ of ministers responsible to parliament. In the Greek case, the formal nomenclature differs. The ‘full’ cabinet is known as the ‘Ministerial Council’ (Υπουργικο Συμβουλιο) and this is the term used here. In addition, a ‘mini-‘or ‘inner-Cabinet’ operates, termed initially the ‘Government Commission’ (Κυβερνητική Επιτροπή); then renamed Government Council (Κυβερνητικό Συμβούλιο - ΚΥΣΥΜ) under Andreas Papandreou. Here ‘Government Commission’ and ‘Government Council’ are used in their relevant historical context. The ‘cabinet system’ is used as an umbrella term. 4 Over the five cases examined here there are variations in the PM’s role, but the general structural characterisation remains. Two premierships represented modest deviations to another sub-category – ‘Cabinet-ministerial’ – in which the Cabinet as a collectivity was more central. The segmented system also reflects a lack of coordination, monitoring and planning. For example, there is no tradition of ‘a vast network of inter-departmental committees which are a characteristic and important feature of the decision-making structure of Western governments’ (Mackie and Hogwood,